


Count From Zero:  we're starting our own story

by moonglider



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst with a Happy Ending, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Idiots in Love, M/M, Time Travel, abilities, kind of, no clue what to tag, they all have abilities
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 06:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28346895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonglider/pseuds/moonglider
Summary: Younghyun always tried to keep it a secret that he could see the lifespans of people tattooed on their wrists. That is until he meets Jaehyung, who has a 0 tattooed on his wrist but isn’t six feet under like Younghyun would assume. For all intents and purposes, Younghyun just met a dead man walking.
Relationships: Kang Younghyun | Young K/Park Jaehyung | Jae
Comments: 16
Kudos: 35





	Count From Zero:  we're starting our own story

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what to tag, but hi thanks for clicking on to this fic. I promise it's not sad :D
> 
> Titles are from Hi Hello by Day6 cause I love that song and it means a lot to me.

A tall man with maroon colored hair softly nudges Younghyun aside. He would have moved when the man said excuse me the first time but he cannot take his eyes off the red haired man’s wrist. There on the inside of his wrist is a 0 in dark blue ink as plain as day for Younghyun to see. He expects exactly one thing to happen right now. But it doesn’t. The tall stranger just walks past him and continues on his way. 

Younghyun cannot tear his eyes off the man’s retreating figure. His eyes linger on his back, shifting just the slightest as he walks away. His feet start to move on their own. He is reaching for the stranger with maroon hair and a 0 on his wrist. Then he stops. If he does reach him — if he grabs him like he is itching to — then what? What does he say? He’s _normal_ now. He is supposed to ignore those stupid numbers on the insides of people’s wrists. Those numbers are not supposed to mean anything to him. Not anymore. But can he really ignore that unwavering 0?

Younghyun likes to pretend he’s normal. He grew up being anything but. People always avoided him and he couldn’t honestly blame them now when he looks back on his childhood. Now, as a mature adult, he tries to pretend his childhood never existed. When people ask, it’s always the same boring lines: 

“I had plenty of friends.”

“My parents were great!”

“School was a breeze.”

It’s never:

“People avoided me like the plague.”

“My parents were scared of me.”

“School was dark and lonely.”

No. He never says that, because he’s pretending he’s  _ normal  _ now. For all intents and purposes, he was normal. He always thought he was until he told his first grade teacher she was going to die in two months. The teacher had laughed it off. Other students thought he was strange for saying it. But people forgot it. They moved on. And Younghyun continued to be just a normal kid. Then his teacher died exactly two months later and no one ever treated him normally again. Suddenly kids started calling him names. Other teachers gave him strange looks. Just like that, he was alone.

Younghyun thought it was perfectly normal to know when people were going to die. He found out the hard way that it certainly was not. Every human has a number in dark blue ink on the inside of their left wrist. Younghyun didn’t always know what it meant and he thought it was completely normal to have one. He was more concerned with the fact that his number was a 0 when no one else’s was. When he could finally string words together he asked his mom what the numbers meant. She was obviously confused and that should have been Younghyun’s first sign that something was amiss. But he was a toddler then, he really didn’t know any better. Didn’t know how to decipher the strange look his mother gave him that day.

And then for the first time he saw the numbers start to rapidly change on somebody’s left wrist. Usually the numbers only change once a year on the same day at the same time. Younghyun didn’t know why the numbers only went down once a year. Usually everyone has different numbers, but some people have the same numbers, though they seem unrelated. Younghyun’s parents have different numbers. He first noticed his father’s number at 39 and each year on the same day it goes down by one. His mother’s number was a 54 and her’s goes down on a different day each year than his father’s number. He found that to be typical for most people. Some had big numbers, some had small numbers. But they only changed once at the exact same time each year. He could always rely on that.

His neighbor had a low number. Younghyun first recognized it as a 2 and then the next year it went to 1. And then something weird happened. The number on his wrist started to count down from 365 each day until his neighbor’s number on his wrist hit 0. He had never seen the numbers change like that before. His neighbor had a heart attack that day. That’s when Younghyun realized what each number meant. It was a countdown to their last breath. 

The following day he told his teacher she was going to die in exactly 62 days. He didn’t know why nobody else had told her she was quickly approaching her death. He thought maybe if he told her she could change her number. When her number hit 0 she was in a horrific car accident. He thought he was helping. He thought that telling her would fix it. That maybe she had the power to change her outcome. So, he kept trying. He told everyone how many years left they had to live. Everyone he met, he greeted them with the number on their wrist. That never went over well.

He never really questioned why he had a 0 on his wrist. It concerned him at first but it never changed so he began to ignore it. Maybe it was a glitch? Maybe he was special? All he knew was the 0 did not mean he was going to die. For others though, it meant certain death. He stopped telling people that though.

As anyone can imagine, people started to avoid Younghyun. They called him a freak. The weirdo that could predict when people died. And that’s when he realized how strange it was that he was in fact the only one who could see the numbers on everyones’ left wrists. And he realized how cruel other humans could be to one another. He started isolating himself. Stopped talking to people, because all he could see were their numbers. All he could see was the day they would die. It was hard to talk to people when he knew something he could never change. Especially the people with small numbers. HIs peers that had numbers like 4 or 12 he would avoid at all costs.

In high school he had to work with a girl that had a 29 on her wrist. He thought that was okay. Short, but he wouldn’t know her by that time. And then the next day it went to 28. And then to 27 and Younghyun quickly realized she did not have 29 years left, but was quickly approaching 26 days left. He refused to leave his room until the 26 days passed. He couldn’t bear it. Couldn't bear to see her there one day and gone the next. He doesn't even know how she died. He never asked. He'll never know if he could have saved her.

Each year his father’s number goes down and he began to realize his time with his father was coming to an end much faster than he could have predicted. Time is funny that way. The early years seemed to stretch on forever. He never thought high school would end. But he blinked and his father’s number went from 23 to 14. Trying to ignore it has never worked. He’s never been able to change the numbers anyway. His number is the only one that doesn’t change. And the man that just walked by him with the same 0 on his wrist.

His footsteps quicken. He can’t lose the tall stranger in the crowd. He just can’t. He has so many questions. Why does the 0 never change? Why aren’t they dead? That tall red haired man should be on the floor dead as a doornail, but he continues walking, a stupid grin on his face without a care in the world, none the wiser that he is out of time. They both should be out of time.

Younghyun reaches for him. He latches around his wrist, shielding the glaring 0 from his view. He hates the numbers. They make his stomach twist with dread and anxiety. He once tried to save someone. Really tried. They were crossing the street. Younghyun was only twelve years old. The number on the old woman’s wrist was 1. She was shuffling slowly across the street. The car was coming fast and then her number went to 0. Younghyun pulled her quickly out of the way. The car just nearly missed her and Younghyun thought for a second he did it. He changed her number. But the 0 was still there and the woman laid on the street dead. She had a stroke. Younghyun changed nothing. He didn’t try again after that. He didn’t even speak again for a year after that. He didn't have the words to express what was consuming him that day.

“Huh?” the tall man looks around confused before his eyes land on Younghyun. His eyebrows twitch a little but he doesn’t pull away. He just regards Younghyun with an assessing gaze. “Can I help you?” he says, taking Younghyun by surprise. A shiver shoots down his spine at the breathy voice of the tall man and almost instantly all the words waiting to spill out of his mouth are gone. His brain blanks.

“Uh,” he utters like an idiot who can’t even remember his own name.

And yet the stranger doesn’t pull away, he just smiles and Younghyun feels like someone is squeezing his heart. “Am I that gorgeous?” the stranger chuckles, flashing Younghyun another dazzling smile that lights up his whole face and steals Younghyun’s breath away.

He just nods because his brain is offline and his mastery over not one but two languages is currently nonexistent. He is absolutely and completely starstruck by the skinny redhead smiling at him. “You’re funny.” he says, still flashing that dazzling smile at Younghyun.

Younghyun gives himself a mental shake, “You’re wrist,” he attempts, but honestly he doesn’t even know what he is trying to say.

“Yep,” the stranger says. “You’re holding my wrist.” This man must think he is an idiot and he can’t blame him, because he feels pretty dumb right now.

“No, I mean, there’s this— I don’t know how to explain, but there’s this number, we have numbers.” Younghyun groans completely frustrated with himself at this point. “There are numbers on our wrists and you have a zero. No one is supposed to have zero.”

“I didn’t see a zero.” the stranger looks at his right wrist, the one Younghyun’s isn’t holding then back at Younghyun with soft eyes and a small pout. “What does zero mean?” Younghyun is actually surprised this stranger is humoring him so much. If he was the redhead he would have pushed him away and disappeared into the crowd by now. But no, the tall stranger stays put with the softest smile. Younghyun hasn’t felt warmth like this in a long time despite the bristling cold wind whipping by them. His chest feels like it is almost on fire.

People continue to pass by them on the street and it’s a little too cold to be standing there, but Younghyun can’t think of moving. Instead he says, “Only I can see them. They’re supposed to be your lifespan and when the number hits zero…” Well Younghyun does not want to finish that sentence.

“I die.'' The stranger however does finish it and he doesn’t look the least bit concerned or disturbed by Younghyun’s confession. “You’re like me.”

That stops Younghyun cold. “Like you?” he utters, tasting the words on his tongue, because no one has ever said something like that to him.

“My name is Jaehyung. I’ve been looking for you.” Jaehyung smiles, his cheeks slightly flushed from the cold air. Younghyun’s hand slips away from his wrist, but Jaehyung is quick and grabs a hold of his hand. He laces their fingers together, locking tight around each other so Younghyun can’t escape. He can’t lose him, but they can’t talk here. Jaehyung starts to pull the stunned black haired man behind him. 

He admits to being startled by the man grabbing his wrist at first, but then he took in his sharp feline eyes and even sharper cheekbones and Jaehyung must admit, he was weak. Weak for such a pretty man that he was willing to humor him until the words he was saying actually began to make sense and then everything clicked into place for Jaehyung.

Yes, Jaehyung had been looking for him. He never thought the black haired man would be the one to find him though.

**Author's Note:**

> ...idk. What do you think? I only read this over once and I don't feel like doing it again so I hope it made sense.


End file.
